On Apr 8, 2005, at 4:35 PM, Bob Henkel wrote:
> desktop SATA drive with no RAID? I'm by any means as knowledgeable
> about I/O
> setup as many of you are but my 2 cents wonders if the Dell RAID is
> really
> that much slower than a competitively priced/speced alternative? Would
> Joel's problems just fade away if he wasn't using a Dell RAID?
>
"Dell RAID" is not one thing. They sell "altered" RAID cards from
Adaptec and LSI. Whatever alteration they do to them tends to make
them run not so fast.
I have a Dell SATA RAID (adaptec based) on the office server and it is
OK, though not something I'd buy again.
I have various PERC 3 and PERC 4 RAID controllers on my servers (SCSI
based) and they suck under heavy I/O load.
I wonder why the name-brand LSI cards work so much faster... perhaps it
is the motherboard? I don't know, and I don't care... :-) For me,
high performance DB and Dell servers are mutually exclusive.
Vivek Khera, Ph.D.
+1-301-869-4449 x806